Carl Frederick Zeidler was the mayor of the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from 1940 to 1942.

Born in Milwaukee, he graduated from Marquette University

Marquette University

Marquette University is a private, coeducational, Jesuit, Roman Catholic university located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Founded by the Society of Jesus in 1881, the school is one of 28 member institutions of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities...

 in 1929 and receiving a J.D. in 1931.

Serving as an assistant city attorney for Milwaukee (1936–1940), Zeidler stunned the city when he upset six-term Socialist

Socialist Party of America

The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...

 mayor Daniel Hoan

Daniel Hoan

Daniel Webster "Dan" Hoan was a United States lawyer and politician. He became the second Socialist mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and his tenure is generally considered to be the longest continuous socialist administration in U.S. history...

 to become mayor of Milwaukee in 1940. Hoan had served as mayor for the past 24 years.

His rise to power was orchestrated by young writers Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch

Robert Albert Bloch was a prolific American writer, primarily of crime, horror and science fiction. He is best known as the writer of Psycho, the basis for the film of the same name by Alfred Hitchcock...

 (later the author of Psycho) and Harold Gauer, who created elaborate campaign shows. In Bloch's autobiography, Once Around the Bloch, he gives an inside account of the campaign, and the innovations he and Gauer came up with... for instance, the original "releasing-balloons-from-the-ceiling" shtick. He comments bitterly on how, after Zeidler's election, they were ignored and not even paid their promised salaries, while credit was taken by local establishment figures like Milton Rice Polland

Milton Rice Polland

Milton Rice Polland was an American life insurance executive, businessman and political activist from Wisconsin, who served as an Ambassador-at-Large for the Republic of the Marshall Islands.-Background:...

 instead.

He ends the account with a philosophical point:

"If Carl Zeidler had not asked Jim Doolittle to manage his campaign, Doolittle would never have contacted me about it. And the only reason Doolittle knew me to begin with was because he read my yarn ("The Cloak") in Unknown

Unknown (magazine)

Unknown was an American pulp fantasy fiction magazine, published from 1939 to 1943 by Street & Smith, and edited by John W. Campbell. Unknown was a companion to Street & Smith's science fiction pulp, Astounding Science Fiction, which was also edited by Campbell at the time; many authors and...

.

Rattling this chain of circumstances, one may stretch it a bit further. If I had not written a little vampire story called "The Cloak", Carl Zeidler might never have become mayor of Milwaukee.".

Zeidler was attracting some attention on the national political scene when World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 broke out. He believed that he could best help the war effort by enlisting; he resigned his position as mayor and accepted a Naval Reserve

United States Navy Reserve

The United States Navy Reserve, until 2005 known as the United States Naval Reserve, is the Reserve Component of the United States Navy...

 commission on April 8, 1942. He asked for the most dangerous job on ship and became officer in charge of a gun battery on board the merchant ship

United States Merchant Marine

The United States Merchant Marine refers to the fleet of U.S. civilian-owned merchant vessels, operated by either the government or the private sector, that engage in commerce or transportation of goods and services in and out of the navigable waters of the United States. The Merchant Marine is...

 SS La Salle. The ship and all hands were reported missing off the coast of South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

 on December 11, 1942. He was officially presumed dead November 2, 1944. A gravestone cenotaph marks his plot at Forest Home Cemetery

Forest Home Cemetery

Forest Home Cemetery located in the Lincoln Village neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wisconsin is the final resting place of many of the city's famed beer barons, politicians and social elite...

 in Milwaukee.

Carl's brother, Socialist Frank P. Zeidler

Frank P. Zeidler

Frank Paul Zeidler was an American Socialist politician and Mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, serving three terms from April 20, 1948 to April 18, 1960. He was the most recent Socialist mayor of any major American city, although U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders was the mayor of Burlington, the largest...

 later became mayor of Milwaukee from 1948 to 1960.

Carl Zeidler was known as the "Singing Mayor of Milwaukee" because wherever he went he always had a song for every meeting or occasion, especially "God Bless America

God Bless America

"God Bless America" is an American patriotic song written by Irving Berlin in 1918 and revised by him in 1938. The later version has notably been recorded by Kate Smith, becoming her signature song ....

"; he was also called the "Boy Mayor" because of his boyish good looks.

See also

• List of mayors of Milwaukee
• Frank P. Zeidler
  Frank P. Zeidler
  Frank Paul Zeidler was an American Socialist politician and Mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, serving three terms from April 20, 1948 to April 18, 1960. He was the most recent Socialist mayor of any major American city, although U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders was the mayor of Burlington, the largest...